THE mother of a 16-year-old boy who hanged himself nine days into a two-year detention term at a young offenders' institution yesterday welcomed calls for a public inquiry into his death.

The coroner for Mid and North Shropshire, John Ellery, said he would be writing to the Home Secretary to make the recommendation after Joseph Scholes was found hanged from a bedsheet tied to his cell window at Stoke Heath YOI, near Market Drayton, Shropshire.

An inquest jury sitting at Shrewsbury Magistrates Court returned a verdict of accidental death in Joseph's case.

This, the foreman said, was "in part contributed to because the risk was not properly recognised and appropriate precautions were not taken to prevent it".

Joseph had a long history of depression and self-harm and had threatened to hang himself if staff at the YOI tried to move him from the healthcare centre, where he was placed as a vulnerable youth, on to the main wing.

On March 24, 2002, about 30 minutes after a visit from the duty governor who discussed this transfer, the teenager was found hanged.

Speaking after the hearing, the teenager's mother, Yvonne Scholes, said she welcomed the coroner's recommendation for a public inquiry - something for which she had been fighting for two years.

Mrs Scholes, 44, from Meliden, Denbighshire, said, "The jury probably felt Joseph didn't actually mean to kill himself and, if prevented from doing so, would havegone on to have a full and happy life.

"We know he was kept in inhuman conditions before he took his life."

Mrs Scholes said she hoped the Government would listen to the coroner's call for a public inquiry.

"What I would like to come out of Joseph's death is that all children are removed from the care of the Prison Service who, time and time again, have failed to care for those children, and instead put them into local authority secure units under the care of local authorities."

At the conclusion of the 10-day hearing, Mr Ellery said, "In this case, Joseph may have hanged himself and because he may have hoped to be found ... in an attempt to get a transfer to a secure unit."

He called on the Home Office to reconsider the use of "strip gowns" - into which Joseph, who allegedly suffered sexual abuse from the age of six, was put for four days.

Giving evidence, Robin Hughes, an independent childcare consultant, described this heavy, one-piece robe as a "dehumanisinggarment" worn with no underwear.

In his recommendations, the coroner said that, although sentencing policy was outside the scope of the inquest, it had been part of a chain ofevents culminating in Joseph's death.